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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

Adding Value in Development Guest was Patrick Waara of Xerox Corporation,

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Pat has been with Xerox for nearly 25 years. He has both a BS and an MS in computer science from Michigan Technological University. He has held a variety of jobs at Xerox, including developing user interface systems for Xerox's DocuTech and Systems Architect for Xerox's iGen3, all dealing with software development and systems.

Pat also works at St. Joseph's Neighborhood Center, which provides medical, counseling, dental, and social services to the uninsured, where he utilizes his software and Lean Six Sigma skills to support their IT and process infrastructure that he installed during a Xerox sponsored leave of absence. He is currently a Software Design for Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Candidate and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Candidate where he is teaching Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile techniques to Xerox's software development community improving software development capability.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business901 podcast.

With me today is Patrick Waara, who is a Six Sigma black belt candidate at Xerox, and also handles teaching the software design and Agile methods for the Lean Six Sigma candidates. Patrick, could you go ahead and explain your position in a little more detail.

Patrick Waara: I am a software design for Lean, Six Sigma Master Black Belt candidate.

And what that means is I am teaching software or software engineers agile and lean software development techniques. I do teaching and coaching here within Xerox, trying to improve our software development techniques and utilizing agile and lean techniques to do that. In parallel to that, I am also getting my traditional Lean Six Sigma black belt. But, I primarily focus my time working with software development, because my history has always been in product development, software development.

Joe: Well, one of the reasons that brought us to this podcast is during the development of the Work Center 7545 and the Work Center 7556, there was a lot of discussions on the agile part and the scrum part of the process that you worked on. Could you tell me about some of the things that happened during that project?

Patrick: First of all, most of our software development organizations have adopted Scrum as their project management technique, particularly in the software development area. And so they utilized the three rules of the scrum team, the scrum master with the product owner and they carry on the various events with the retrospective and the demo and the planning, the iteration planning and all the traditional scrum events. In this particular case, there was an incident where one of the teams was falling behind and it was through the Adding Value in Development Copyright Business901

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems utilization of the retrospectives and the demos that they were able to borrow from another organization to essentially do load balancing so that they could come in and help that other team to actually meet their deliverables. It was the usage of the scrum that enabled that kind of mentality for them to see the problem and go in there and quickly try to fix it.

Joe: Is that how you introduce the concept of swarming? Is that as you attack the problem, let's say?

Patrick: Yes, I don't know if the attacking was part of the swarming part. But if you want to talk about swarming, in nature swarming is essentially how certain groups of animals, bees and birds and fish and things like that. How they can all react as what seemingly is a single organism, without any command and control. There's no leader that's telling them you do this and you do that. Somehow they all kind of figure out what's the right thing to do and they go off and do it. So, there's been some discussion lately around how Agile and Scrum in particular has some of those swarming principles or characteristics. I think it all boils down to both of those environments utilize self-organized teams.

Scrum is all about how a team organizes themselves around what's the best way to deliver the commitment. Nobody is in there telling each individual programmer you do this, you do that, you do it this way. The team self-organizes and they figure it out and they say "OK, this is how we're going to solve this particular problem, let's go to it."

I guess there's a lot of similarity to the... That's how it works in the animal world sometimes. When things like hives or swarms of fish, can just go off and figure out what's the right thing for them to do.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: Do you have a task room? Or a room where the team resides in?

Patrick: Generally, yeah. Most of the teams have what we call a common room, where they will get together and do the majority of their development. The common room is usually several tables put together and everybody's workstations there. On the walls they'll have information radiators. They have their burn down charts and their task boards, so they can see what's going on in the development and where they are at that particular iteration.

That way, there is a much higher bandwidth communication between each of the developers. If somebody has a question, they just ask across the table, instead of having to send email, or an IM, or walk down the hall or something. So it just facilitates, more cooperative development when everybody's in the same area.

Joe: So in the old terminology that maybe other terminology that would be kind of like a war room concept?

Patrick: Back in the day when we used to use war rooms, that was more, at least the way we experienced it here was, the war room was more of a place where peoples status their work. The information would all be up there, and people would come in. They would status where they were. You know, that's where the planning took place. The common room, I think, is more where the work takes place. So the people are actually in there getting their work done. Which I think is slightly different from, the way the war room used to be.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: You actually have your task board, you have your iteration plan, and it’s visible to anyone. I guess that would enable other people to come in and help, and get up to date really quick. They can just stand and look.

Patrick: One of the central pillars of any kind of empirical project management like this is there has to be transparency. You have to be able to see what's going on. In order for you to then be able to inspect and adapt, which is the other two pillars that you need to have.

Without this visibility, people won't be able to see where there are problems or where there are issues. Through the retrospective at the end of the iteration, there's also that same sharing of information.

Joe: You said the other two pillars were, inspect and adapt. Was the first pillar then transparency?

Patrick: Yes. Information needs to be transparent. You need to be able to see what's going on in your project or your process. Otherwise things are hidden from you. And if things are hidden from you, you can't react to them.

Joe: How do you go about teaching something like that? Do you just throw them in a room and talk to them about what they're able to do? Or, are you at a point now that you're just introducing, let's say a new person with some basic instruction from you, into that room? Like one at a time, into a group of five or six or seven?

Patrick: Well the instruction, the way we roll out and deploy our training is, we traditionally start with some training. We do our agile training under the lean six sigma organization. We have a certification process, and a green belt and a black belt process Adding Value in Development Copyright Business901

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems that goes along with this. First of all we lay out the principles. We lay out the lean principles by Womack and Jones and the lean software development principles by Poppendieck. We want to make sure that everybody understands the principles behind the practices that we're then going to teach them. You don't get into a cargo cult mentality, where people are just following particular practices because that's what they were told to do. You know, you want people to understand why these things work and why it's important.

We get into the actual practices around the traditional Agile development things. You know, Agile modeling, continuous integration, customer driven development, pair-programming, all those Agile practices. We also start teaching around Agile project management. In particular we talk about Scrum.

Once we have that training done, then we do like a coaching workshop, where we actually start implementing the concepts that we just taught them, on their actual code. We'll work with them through a project that they'll bring in.

They will be able to implement everything they just learned on the real code. It's real work; it's a real project, so that kind of gets them introduced to it. Then, since every organization is different, it largely becomes a matter of them trying to figure out what's the best way for them to implement it.

That's where I become available as a coach, where I can come in and try to help them solve any of those kinds of problems.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: You're in the front end a little bit, helping them, but then you're also in the rear part, keeping the team together and solving the problems that may come up from a team concept.

Patrick: Yeah. I won't even say I'm in there solving the problems, but I'm there trying to help them solve their own problems, create an environment where they can apply the learning and apply the techniques. It really boils down to applying a plan-do-check-act cycle on all of the things that they're dealing with. Whether it's the product development or whether they're tackling issues in their environment, creating common rooms or dealing with infrastructure issues.

Joe: When we sit there and talk, you walk them through the Lean, the Six Sigma, and the Agile process, is there one of them that's kind of the umbrella over the other three?

Patrick: I would say that the Lean principles are pretty much the umbrella that we put over all of this, really looking at making sure we understand what the value is and what your value stream is and how information and value flows through that process, because you have that and, of course, pull and continuous improvement and perfection. Those principles then drive all the other things. When you start looking at, "So what does that mean to software?" and then we can draw from Poppendieck's work and say, "All right, well, how does that apply to software around eliminating waste and creating knowledge and all those things?" it all flows back, though, to these Lean principles of really understanding what value you're creating and how you can make that flow through your system as seamlessly as possible.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Then, because it's Lean and Six Sigma, the Six Sigma part, we really focus more then on making sure that there's a focus on defects, and good tools and good measurements on eliminating defects, because, while Scrum and things focus on slow, you also need something that's going to focus on building that integrity in and making sure that you're building quality in from the very beginning and not just trying to test it at the end.

Joe: So you use a lot of what you would say DFSS, or design for Six Sigma, too, in the process.

Patrick: Here at Xerox, we do Lean Six Sigma and we do design for Lean Six Sigma. We combine both methodologies and really see them as being very complementary and really working very well together. We apply that both in traditional Lean Six Sigma as well as design for Lean Six Sigma.

Joe: When you do that you're borrowing the best from either a little bit, or using the appropriate tool at the appropriate time. But when the tools overlap, do you have a favorite type? Are you using DMAIC? Are you using PDCA? How do you determine what to use there?

Patrick: Well, I guess it really would depend on the problem that you're working on. If we're really focusing on the development side, then we're really focusing more on a PDCA methodology. Which is what Scrum really is, right? Scrum is just a plan-do-check-act methodology. Because any product development is really a knowledge-creation process, it's not a well-defined process, so all you can do is continue to go through multiple learning cycles, which is what the iterations are in your Scrum methodology. To make a plan, do it, check your results, and then add the net result and continue to build the knowledge.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Now, if we were, on the other hand, trying to solve an existing problem, well then, DMAIC might be the right approach. Then which tools you draw from that, whether it's Six Sigma tools or Lean tools, it's really going to boil down to what problem it is that you're working on.

Joe: The other thing that we talked about is that you spend most of your time in the Agile side? And when we get into the Agile that can be a culture in itself?

Patrick: I think I know what you mean. Sometimes I characterize it as the Agile movement. There's a lot of talk and thinking around Agile. But the way we've characterized it here is we recognize the similarities between what the Agile movement has and the practices that Agile is bringing to the table and how they draw from the same principles that Lean is bringing to the table and Six Sigma, for that matter. We look for the common thread between the two, because Xerox has a very strong culture of Lean Six Sigma and design for Lean Six Sigma, so it's very natural for us to look for how what's been called the Agile movement is really very synonymous with the Lean Six Sigma principles. We blend those two things together here at Xerox. I wouldn't just say we're strictly just Agile. We really like to blend those things together.

Joe: When I looked at Agile, and like you had mentioned before, it's very much like a PDCA cycle is what it is. But people in the Agile field, in the software field, I think what is different than when I see Lean and typical manufacturing-type structures, or even in service-type instructions, is Agile places so much more emphasis on feedback and that quicker development cycle than what you see the emphasis placed on traditional Lean and Six Sigma type projects. Do you agree with that?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Patrick: I'm not sure that there's a significant difference between what we do in Lean and what we do in Agile. Certainly, when you look at the original origins of Lean, it came from the manufacturing environment. Manufacturing environments have predefined processes, right? You know what's going to happen at every step, and you know what you're trying to do at the end, so you really look at this predefined process and you're saying, "OK, how can I eliminate waste from this process?" You don't need the same kind of knowledge-creation loops in that kind of a process that you'd need in a product-development process, like software development that's using Agile.

You are going to need tighter iterations and more feedback in a product-development environment, because you don't know. It's not a defined process. Now, when you take the Lean principles from the manufacturing process and you start bringing those into a product-development environment, then you start needing the same sorts of feedback loops. Because then it boils down to "We don't know what we're doing next.

We're not following a recipe. Now we're creating a brand-new recipe." When you're creating a brand-new recipe, you've got to learn more, and so you have to have a lot more feedback into that whole cycle.

I think whether you're talking pure Lean or whether you're talking Agile, you both get drawn into the same conclusions, that when you don't know what you're doing, you need feedback.

Joe: One of the things that have been introduced lately in Agile and under the Agile umbrella, I guess, would be Kanban. The essence of Kanban, one of the great advantages, is managing work in process. Have you implemented any of that at Xerox yet?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Patrick: In our product-development environment? Not really. Whether you're talking about a Kanban process or whether you're talking about a Scrum process, either one of those processes are really just looking at managing your flow. They both have pluses and minuses. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. In the Agile community, there's an ever-raging debate about which one is better and which one should be used.

From my perspective, it really doesn't matter. If you focus back on your Lean principles about what value are you creating, what's the process that is used to create it, and how can you make that process flow, Kanban and Scrum are both just answers to that question about how you can make value flow through your value stream as fast as possible?

Which one you choose is really almost unimportant. As long as you're really focusing on the fact that you're trying to get value to flow through your process. The principle of making that happen is more important than the actual tool you use to make it happen.

Joe: I think you really hit the nail on the head. Because it's all about what you do well and what tools you can use to accomplish flow.

Patrick: Yes, exactly.

Joe: We started talking a little bit about swarming. It's about putting a lot of people on a single task. When that happens at Xerox, what are the results of it, and kind of some of the negatives of that?

Patrick: Well, the plus side of course is that things get done. The biggest problems that happens, of course, is when you have too many people doing too many things, nothing gets actually finished. We call it dog piling. When you dog pile everybody onto a single Adding Value in Development Copyright Business901

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems backlog item, that thing is going to get done. If you're working on the most important thing, you're getting the most important things done. That's really what's important is finishing things, getting things completed, so that you can then move on to the next thing.

That's the real advantage of putting everybody on one single task, the top priority task.

I guess the downside is sometimes people might be idle in that if they're not immediately able to be working on something because their contribution, maybe they're blocked or something like that. There's a perception that since they're not busy at that moment, they should be working on something else.

So that perception can make a lot of people say "Well, maybe they should pick up another task, something else that's not the most important thing and start working on that." That's a slippery slope because then all of a sudden you start building up your WIP again, and once your WIP starts building up, we all know what happens. I guess that the downside is you might not be fully utilizing your resources, but if you do fully utilize your resources, then any kind of a slip up causes a huge delay.

Joe: What you're saying is that swarming may not be as efficient, but if your priority is flow, you disregard the efficiency a little bit?

Patrick: Yes, exactly. The analogy I always give is it's a relay race, and you want to focus on the baton. How fast is that baton going around the track, not how fast is each individual runner busy at any given moment, it’s how fast is that baton going around the track. That baton is the value going through your system. You want to focus on "How fast is the value flowing through my system?" Not "Are all my resources currently fully utilized?"

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems The measure of efficiency should be "How fast can I get value to go through my system?"

Not "How utilized are my resources?"

Joe: When you use your different agile techniques, what's your typical team size? They're all different sizes depending upon the project or how do you try to break that down?

Patrick: Depends on what you mean by team. So each Scrum team is around seven plus or minus two people, somewhere in that sweet spot range. But then, of course, each project has multiple teams working on that project, so any given product would have anywhere from, I don't know, could be five to 15 different Scrum teams working on it. It really just depends on the size of the actual project.

Joe: Sure. But your typical Scrum team has seven people on it, like you said, plus or minus two?

Patrick: Yes. Joe: And you have a Scrum master for each one. Are there any other particularities that you develop within a team? Or that you look for?

Patrick: What do you mean?

Joe: You have a Scrum master. Is there any other hierarchy that you're looking for within a team or any other type of, you got to have one of this or one of this in there?

Patrick: You want cross functional teams. That's always important that each Scrum team should have the people on it that are required to deliver whatever vertical slice of Adding Value in Development Copyright Business901

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems functionality that you're trying to deliver for the product. One of the bad smells you see sometimes when people start adopting Scrum is they basically take their functional group and they say "OK, now you're a Scrum team.' You'll hear "I have the database Scrum team," or "I have the UI Scrum team," or "I have the testing Scrum team," and obviously that's not going to work well because when you're done, you don't have a vertical slice of functionality that's been delivered.

You want a Scrum team that is going to have somebody from UI, or somebody from the database or somebody from the domain layer, a tester on the group or whatever, so that each team then is able to deliver fully functioning pieces of functionality and not horizontal layers of capability.

Joe: In the process, when you have a Scrum teams, you have a global Scrum master, too, that's managing all the teams?

Patrick: The way that's usually dealt with is a hierarchy. You have all your Scrum teams and then you night have a Scrum of Scrums where all the Scrum masters get together and start talking about inter-Scrum team issues and dependencies. Similarly how each scrum team would have a product owner talking and making decisions about what is going to be delivered and what's important for that particular Scrum team. They will then be kind of hierarchical where there will be a product owner who can then make decisions across each of those teams, priority calls and say, "this needs to be done before this needs to before this." Or organize if necessary when there are interdependencies between deliveries of the scrum teams.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: Sounds like to me that Xerox must spend a lot of time on team building and team concept training.

Patrick: As part of our training we do talk about the importance of the team. When you talk about what is a team? You have to find a common goal, without a common goal, you don't have a team. We do talk about those kinds of concepts around what makes a team and what makes a team function well together and how it really is, it boils down to it's individual behaviors that really make a whole team function. Particularly in our Black Belt program, we do spend a lot more time on that kind of stuff, but we do sprinkle that out throughout our Green Belt training as well.

Joe: Do you think this concept; is this going into other areas at Xerox besides just the software development? I mean, into hardware development and different things like that.

Are you using this team concept and design?

Patrick: In the hardware area, they use less Agile and iterative development techniques.

They focus more on modeling techniques. Because just like software, hardware is all about knowledge creation and product development is all about knowledge creation. Well, iterations in hardware are a lot more expensive. You don't generate as many iterations, the way that our hardware people gain knowledge is they do a lot of modeling.

They end up pulling a lot more from the Six Sigma side of things. They do a lot of design experiments and they do modeling, that sort of methodology to create their knowledge. So that when they do their next build of hardware, they've gotten a lot of the wrinkles out of their design so that it will come together a lot smoother and faster.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Software is cheap to iterate. Software does their knowledge creation by iterations and feedback. They just generate another iteration, get more feedback. So, the same principle of creating knowledge, but two different ways of actually creating that knowledge.

Joe: I always get confused sometimes when people are talking about these different things, these different tools and then they slide into problem solving. Can you define really a difference between the regular work flow and problem solving or do you use that term interchangeably?

Patrick: Depends on what you mean by problem solving, but if you're talking about root cause analysis, that is built into a lot of your design techniques. When you're trying to figure out why or how something should work, you're always trying to look for what's the critical pieces of this. If you're talking about problem solving as in terms of look, we've got a process or a problem and if something's broken, we need to fix it. That's an after-the-fact thing where as product development is much more of we're creating this or trying to design our systems so we don't get those problems in the first place. We do segregate the two disciplines that way. That's really the difference between our traditional Lean Six Sigma verses our Design for Lean Six Sigma.

Lean Six Sigma says you've got a process and you want to find what the problem is, you use Lean Six Sigma techniques to do that. Whereas our Design for Lean Six Sigma says let's design our products so that we don't get the problems in the first place.

Joe: Are you developing a stronger and stronger of what I would say agile culture as far as adaptability and quicker work flows?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Patrick: I think it really is becoming a part of our culture here. The thing with this program from the beginning, I started with this in I think in 2005, is when I first started trying to put together the software design for Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt program. At that time, it was a real push. There was a lot of resistance; there was a lot of skepticism around whether or not this is going to work. We started deploying it and a few early adopters took it on and they started getting successes.

Some other groups start taking it on. They started getting successes. Now, I think we've gone to that tipping point.

Now, it's really changed the culture of how our company works, particularly in the software area. In this whole theory of continuing to improve, I think we can continue to expand all this as we get further out in the overall development process. In software in particular, I really do believe we've seen a real culture shift on how people do their work. I've seen some very powerful and positive impacts from it.

Joe: I can remember you introduced me to pair programming in a podcast a year ago.

What I have seen in the past year is that concept taken and used in other fields. Because of the ability of when you're working with someone or you're working with a team, you get that instant feedback and kind of a daily PDCA cycle that you're constantly improving and you're constantly have a check and balance there. Do you see, in whether you call it pair-programing or team collaboration; have you seen that being utilized more and more?

Patrick: I don't have as much visibility into a lot of the other groups. My impression is in the same time that Agile was really taking off in the software area. You were hearing about rapid development in hardware, all the engineering taking place simultaneously. It was the Adding Value in Development Copyright Business901

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems same kind of concepts and I think they were growing in parallel with each other without really being completely aware of each other. I believe that the folks over in the hardware area are using the same sort of principles and concepts in their hardware development that software is.

Now, of course, because there are differences in how you develop hardware and how you develop software and the various expenses, they're going to draw from different tools but the same principles, I think, are applied in both areas.

Joe: Now, swarming is an Agile response when someone's in trouble in the middle of an iteration is when people gather round to help. When does someone raise their hand or does the Scrum master determine that you need outside help and talks with the other Scrum masters. How do you go about that process to bring in the help?

Patrick: Generally, you'll start seeing -- and it depends on how big your iterations are.

Typically around here, our iterations are reasonably short. We generally have two week iterations. It's usually during the retrospective or the review meeting where this information will come out more across teams.

Within the team, or course, you'll start seeing that in your daily Scrum. If people are having barriers or they're getting into trouble, they'll come out in the daily Scrum.

Usually then, at the end of the retrospective, they'll say look we're behind. What didn't work well? Well guess what, we weren't delivering our commitments, we've got these issues. What are we going to do about it?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Well, we need some more help. That's when you can utilize this Scrum of scrums notion that I talked about before. Where the scrum masters from the various teams can start getting together and talking about inter-team issues.

If one of the Scrum master's teams is having trouble, they can bring that up at the Scrum of Scrums. There at that level, start discussing what would be the best approach to fixing it.

Often what happens is the Scrum masters will bring that information back to their teams.

The teams will collaborate and figure out what's the best way to address the problem.

It's this whole notion of again, self-directed teams. The Scrum master doesn't come down and start telling people, "Hey, you guys have to go work on this other team." But, it's really more of an information flow. And say, "Hey guys, this is what I'm hearing about the project, what do you think we can do?"

The teams will then try to self-direct and figure out what's the best way to approach. Now, of course, they also need to make sure that the product owners are all inline with priorities.

If the team that's the farthest behind, if they're the lowest priority, then that's the thing that's going to fall behind.

If they're a higher priority on the product backlog, those items will be higher so, just like we talked about this morning. People from other teams will then go over and they'll start dog piling these higher issues.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems If they need to break it down into smaller chunks, the other teams can take on some of that work and then they can work on those higher priorities together.

Joe: Well, it has to take some real openness with all the teams and all the team individuals to be able to do it comfortably and the acceptance that they want help and to help others. That has to be a pretty unique culture, doesn't it?

Patrick: That goes back to that transparency again. In order for any of this stuff to work, you have to be absolutely transparent about everything. If you are having problems, you need to make sure that's visible. That's why their task boards and their burn-down charts are all up on their walls. That stuff needs to be visible to everybody because, without it being visible, you can't inspect.

If you can't inspect then, you can't adapt. You have to be transparent so that this whole thing works. If you don't have that transparency, then none of this is going to work.

Joe: The other part that you talked about, the other three pillars, you talked about inspect and adapt. I think we've covered "adapt" pretty well in this whole thing. But, what about the inspect part? How often are you inspecting and who is inspecting, I guess?

Patrick: The teams inspect daily during their daily Scrum. They're inspecting to making sure that they're going to be delivering on their commitments. They get together on a daily stand-up for 15 minutes or less. Say what have they delivered, what do they plan working on, and what barriers do they have. Every 24 hours, if not more, because if they're in a common room, they're pretty intimate with what's going on. Minimally, every 24 hours they're together saying whether or not they're going to make their deliverables.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Then, at the end of every iteration, which is typically two weeks around here, they do an inspection on both the product where they do the review. The product owner and any stakeholder, who's interested, will come into that review and look at the progress that the team is making and determine if any corrections need to be made there.

There's that inspection and then at the retrospective there's also inspection. So there, they're looking at the process to determine whether or not any changes need to be made to how they're delivering things.

They're inspecting daily for their delivery for that iteration and at the end of every iteration, they're inspecting the product and they're inspecting the process.

Joe: I'd really like to thank you Pat for insightful conversation about the Agile process and Lean Six Sigma at Xerox. It was very interesting. I learn something every time that I talk to Xerox. I appreciate the opportunity to do this very much. Is there anything you'd like to add to this conversation?

Patrick: No, I just want to say thanks to you Joe. It's always a pleasure talking with you and anytime you'd like to get together, it'd be my pleasure.

Joe: Well, thanks again Pat. This podcast will be available on the Business901 blog site but also Business901 blog site. So, thanks again Pat. Patrick: You're very welcome Joe, thank you.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joseph T. Dager Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022 Email: jtdager@business901.com Web/Blog: http://www.business901.com Twitter: @business901 What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe's ability to combine his expertise with "out of the box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R. Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing direction in areas such as Lean Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance planning methodologies in small businesses. The simplicity of a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better execution. My goal is to allow you spend your time on the need versus the plan.

An example of how we may work: Business901 could start with a consulting style utilizing an individual from your organization or a virtual assistance that is well versed in our principles. We have capabilities to plug virtually any marketing function into your process immediately. As proficiencies develop, Business901 moves into a coach’s role supporting the process as needed. The goal of implementing a system is that the processes will become a habit and not an event.

Business901

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